


ballet shoes and roses

by procrastinatingbookworm



Series: the secret of art is love [3]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, dance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-25
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-11-04 15:10:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10993452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: Aaron Burr's parents left him with no instructions, just a pair of ballet shoes and a legacy to protect.Charles Lee asks him for help at the most inopportune times. Strangely enough, he doesn't mind.Until the damn fool gets himself beaten half to death.





	ballet shoes and roses

**Author's Note:**

> This is a new ship for me, I hope I did it justice!

Aaron is in the middle of a late-afternoon rehearsal when his phone goes off, too loudly, and it's only instinct that keeps him from falling when he lurches to keep dancing, catch his balance, and scramble for his phone at the same time, and the result is a staggering jerk that he manages to turn into a wobbling pirouette before the instructor glares and he runs to turn his phone off, searching through his bag.

Text notifications. One after the other, panicked and terrifying, from Charles Lee.

_did something stupid, come bail me out? [sent 7:52]_

_i'm in the park please come help me [sent 8:01]_

_ah and jl found out what i said about gw [sent 8:03]_

_jl told me to meet him here [sent 8:03]_

_he's wearing brass knuckles [sent 8:09]_

_aaron he's going to hurt me please hurry [sent 8:09]_

_oh god please help me [sent 8:15]_

_aaron please please help me [sent 8:16]_

_1 missed call from Charles Lee_

_hurry [sent 8:20]_

_please [sent 8:24]_

 

Aaron grabs his bag and runs.

*

When Aaron gets to the park, Charles is lying under a tree, one bloodied hand clutching his phone, his t-shirt and jacket stained red, face a mess of cuts and bruises, shuddering and calling for help. Aaron kneels at his side, pulls the jacket off of him, presses it to the worst of the cuts, props him up. There's no panic yet, just quiet determination and heart-pounding adrenaline.

"Charles. Charlie. Lee, can you hear me?" Aaron asks, and keeps talking when he hears a somewhat-affirmative groan. "Did you call for an ambulance?" Another groan, accompanied by a weak head shake.

"Jesus, Charlie." Aaron mutters, absently brushing Charles' hair out of his face, reaching for his phone. Reality seems far away, the entire world reduced to just the two of them kneeling under a tree, covered in blood (Aaron's bag is out of reach, he has to use the one Charles is holding, it's covered in blood oh  _god_ )

The panic doesn't set in until he hangs up, and he pulls Charles closer, pressing the jacket against his wounds, cupping the back of his head with the other hand, breathing heavily. Tries to calm himself with the facts.

(One: "ah" and "jl" are Alex Hamilton and John Laurens.)

(Two: Aaron wants to beat the living hell out of both of them.)

(Three: He's not going to. Three reasons.)

(Reason A: James and Thomas wouldn't be happy with him if he  ~~hurt their friend~~ got to Alex first.)

(Reason B: The Instructor (he has a name, but the whole ballet group just calls him "The Instructor")  _really_ wouldn't be happy if his star pupil beat someone up, and orphan or not, talent or not, The Instructor doesn't keep people he's not happy with in the class.)

(Reason C: He'd get his ass kicked anyway.)

(Back to facts. Four: Charles Lee talks entirely too much. "gw" is George Washington, and if Charles said enough about him to piss off Alex and John to the point of violence, he's been talking quite a bit.)

(Five: Aaron's not going to interfere.)

Charles calls his name, in a breathless sound that's half gasp and half sob, and Aaron shifts him in his arms and closes his eyes until the sirens bring reality's splintered pieces back together again.

*

He texts James and Thomas in the waiting room, tells them what happened, and winces at the flurry of texts that comes in, silencing his phone before he bothers anyone. It's nine thirty, and the waiting room is mostly empty. Aaron's been in enough hospitals to know the beats and melodies of tragedy.

(6 pm. 3 am. 8 am.)

James and Thomas start finishing each other's sentences, and Aaron cuts in with a " _It's alright, you don't have to do anything about it, I'll take care of Charles, and JL/AH if I have to._ "

The next texts he gets (James would like how that sentence sounds) are complaints about his insistence on proper capitalization and punctuation in text messages, and Aaron lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding, and sniffles. He's still wearing his leotard, under the sweatpants he put on in the taxi on the way to the park, and the jacket he slipped on in the ambulance, and its covered in blood. His feet are bare, too, his ballet shoes stuffed in his bag and his sneakers in the cubby in the rehearsal room, and there's dirt under his toenails and dried blood on his ankle, and he stares at it, red-black-brown on bronze-chocolate-brown (it's something Alex would paint) until the nurse comes to tell him that Charles is awake, and that he can talk to him.

*

Charles grabs his hand when he sits in the chair next to him, and Aaron smiles and brushes dark hair away from his face, fingers ghosting over the bandage at his temple. They both giggle childishly, relief and exhaustion spilling over, and Charles murmurs his name, asks a question that drives a pause between them, and Aaron stands.

(Charles asks: "dance for me?")

Aaron walks into the empty space between the door and the bed, in sweatpants and bare feet, shrugs off his jacket, kicks it out of the way, and dances.

He doesn't dance for himself. He never has. He doesn't dance for his parents, for their wishes, for their legacy, not this time. He dances for Charles Lee, for an audience of one, under the stark white hospital lights, and when Charles whoops and applauds, it's better than any audience that his parents' last name brought him in front of.

*

 _"I think I might be in love with Charles Lee."_ (Aaron texts Thomas and James the next morning)

 _"whaaaat??"_ (from Thomas)

 _"really? him?"_ (from James)

 _"what about alex?"_ (Thomas again)

 _"This is different. Who doesn't have a minor crush on Alex, anyway?"_ (Charles is asleep, so Aaron doesn't have to hide his smirk)

 _"no comment"_ (Thomas)

 _"uh"_ (James)

 _"So what do I do?"_ (Fact: He's not going to wait around, not for this)

 _"something makes me think you already know the answer."_ (Of course James would say something like that)

 _"dramatic as always, jemmy"_ (Thomas, ever ready with a witty response)

But he's right. Aaron does know the answer.

He dances.


End file.
